Akira Kurosawa, Flatland, and Prabhudeva ~ tales on dimensions
Kurosawa's classic Rashomon has been dissected academically for more than 70 years through the lenses of filmmaking, philosophy, law, and Japanese culture.
"The film depicts the rape of a woman and the murder of her samurai husband through the widely differing accounts of four witnesses, including the bandit-rapist, the wife, the dead man (speaking through a medium), and lastly the woodcutter, the one witness who seems the most objective and least biased. The stories are mutually contradictory and even the final version may be seen as motivated by factors of ego and saving face. The actors kept approaching Kurosawa wanting to know the truth, and he claimed the point of the film was to be an exploration of multiple realities rather than an exposition of a particular truth."
Only after watching the director's cut where other directors share their views, one realizes the very idea of competing 'truth' can be visually presented by the properties of triangles!
There were primarily 3 scenes. The forest scene, where the event occurred. The court scene, where the witnesses were summoned. The 'present' scene occurs at the Rashomon gate.
Kurosawa uses truth's complexity to position the character in a scene. When 3 characters (the bandit, the samurai, and his wife) or (the woodcutter, the priest, and the commoner) are in agreement, they are sitting/standing in a straight line. When 2 agree and one disagrees, if you connect the dots where they were positioned, it will form an isosceles triangle. And, when all 3 disagree and each one seems to have their own solid reason/justification they form an equilateral triangle. The visual metaphor prompts the viewers to contemplate their perception. Now, my discussion on the Rashomon effect is never complete without these geometrical elements whether I am engaging my audience with contemporary history, IGCSE Global Perspectives, or film appreciation!
Edwin Abbott's 1884 book and its 2007 animated version have been my favourite to discuss not only in introducing 'dimensions' and life in 2D, more importantly in engaging my middle-school learners on class, caste, and oppression. The book also leaves a lot of seed ideas to discuss misinformation and how propagandists perpetuate myths. Here is Carl Sagan's take on Flatland and dimensions from his program Cosmos. Combining Flatland with the 50s Disney classic Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land, I also get a chance to discuss the history of mathematics (albeit a Euro-centric one). With more senior learners/teachers, Flatland also offers a bag full of thoughts to talk about Thomas Kuhn and Popper.
领英推荐
Prabhudeva's 1994 entry as a leading actor was phenomenal and changed the art and budget of dance sequences forever. In many theatre's either the Mukkala song or the Urvashi song were offered as a special encore after the end credits.
Master choreographer Prabhudeva in the midst of maestro Kurosawa and communicator non-pareil Carl Sagan, you may ask?
Well, if you watch in the last minute (at 4:24min) of the Mukkala song one more time, partially invisible Prabhudeva (blame it on the limitations of '90s technology), had to limit his movements in a very interesting way.
Dimensions again. If you notice, his hands are allowed to move only in the up and down direction (the x- and y-axis) and never in front of his body (the z-axis). He and his brother choreographer Raju Sundaram have to come up with dance movements that are x-y-axis oriented. And within those limitations, they weaved an enduring magic. The 2020 version of the same song doesn't have that dimensional handicap. I have seen the original song umpteen times (like many Indians from that decade) but never realized this interesting snippet till the graphic designer Shamim broke it down on his YouTube channel Kiba Kibi.
What next?
Travel to higher dimensions with Professor Carlo Sequin (with Brady Haran as a co-passenger) in his immensely popular video on Polytopes.